Kop fans despair after mistakenly sucking in Chelsea goal

LIVERPOOL’S EMOTIONAL Kopites have admitted that they mistakenly sucked in John Arne Riise’s last minute own goal against Chelsea on Wednesday. The famous Kop lung previously claimed credit for sucking in Luis Garcia’s controversial ‘goal’ in 2005’s Chelsea game, but this time it all went wrong during a particularly rousing rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone as the entire stand took a breath at once, and pulled the ball over the line.

Riise was about to clear an innocuous low cross with his trusty right boot when the suction from behind the goal swept him off his feet, forcing him to head the ball. The massive inhalation dragged the ball up into the net, along with the calamitous wing-back. Pepe Reina had little chance to stop either the defender or the ball as he couldn’t see for the tears formed by the emotional sing-song.

“We normally suck in up to 10 goals a season, sometimes as many as 11, but this has never happened before,” said Kop regular Sam Crutchly. “On a Massive European Night like this it would be easy to choke. No such luck though, we were inhaling and exhaling better than ever.”

The Kop lung has had a huge impact on Liverpool’s success over the years and was recently ranked 48th in a poll of all-time Liverpool greats, between Glenn Hysen and Florent Sinama-Pongolle. But controversy has never been far away, because of the lung’s dangerous side-effects on wider society. In 1987 Michael Fish blamed the beginning of the Great Storm on a particularly strong gust created by the Kop as they tried to suck in a Gary Gillespie header. In 1991 Malaysian businessman Laxman Paxman was caught on camera offering particularly heavy breathers in the Kop tickets to see Scouse pop sensation Sonia as a bribe to throw a big Littlewoods Cup game against Luton Town.

Published June 2, 2008

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